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Back when Out of Your Head Brooklyn was taking place at Threes Brewing in Gowanus, I invited my good friend and Signal Problems leader Danny Gouker to co-curate a cycle. One of his more courageous lineups was a set of three bass players and three trumpet players. It worked, so he booked a recording session in a church. That worked too, so we released it under the title Sanctuary. We think this ended up being pretty damn cool, and so did the fine folks at pfMENTUM who decided to release it. Trumpets and Basses is Danny Gouker, Kenny Warren, and Jake Henry on trumpets, and Will McEvoy, Zach Swanson, and myself on basses. Album art by the ever-amazing TJ Huff (huffart.com). Recorded at Cadman Congressional Church and mixed by Nathaniel Morgan at Buckminster Palace, and mastered by Wayne Peet at Newzone Studio. It is OUT NOW–please check the links below for a few listens, commitment free.

Some really exciting things going on with Out of Your Head Brooklyn through the summer (and hopefully beyond!) We have found an awesome home inThrees Brewing, and are excited to have an extended run of dates for the summer.

We’ve just secured (and are very, very excited about) these dates at Threes. For May, June, July, and August we will be at Threes on the LAST Sunday of every month. Easy to remember, right? Those dates will be:

Sunday May 31
Sunday June 28
Sunday July 26
Sunday August 30

And hot off the press, to end this awesome co-curated run with Danny Gouker & Eric Trudel, here is the lineup for Sunday May 31. Huge thanks to Eric & Danny for all their work on this–these sets have been truly awesome & inspiring!

A few shows in the NYC and Baltimore areas coming up in September. Excited to be playing creative original music written by some very talented people who are also close friends. Hope to see you out! Lots of these are conveniently located and many of them won’t cost you a dime! Here are some highlights:

Saturday 9/8–Signal Problems @ Sounds and Sounds, Launch Pad, 721 Franklin, Brooklyn NY, Danny Gouker-trumpet, compositions; Eric Trudel-sax; AH-bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell-drums, 8p, brooklynlaunchpad.org–Danny has some new music for this one, and as one of the longest standing bands I play it we’ve developed some unique Baltimore-house chemistry!

Tuesday 9/11–Out of Your Head Baltimore @ The Windup Space, 12 W North Ave, Baltimore MD, Peter Formanek-sax; Mike Cerri-trumpet; AH-bass; Jim Hannah-percussion, 9:30p, no cover, outofyourhead.org–Happy to be back at the home court playing in this great music series, kept alive by Matt Frazao and Jon Birkholz. ALWAYS my favorite place to play, anywhere.

Friday 9/14–Little Brothers @ 285 Midwood, 285 Midwood, Brooklyn NY, Nathaniel Morgan-alto sax; AH-bass; Devin Gray-drums, 8p, no cover–Really excited to be performing for the first time with trio, which as the name suggests is made up of three youngest brothers. We feel that this strongly influences our approach to almost everything, music included. The few times we’ve played instead of just hang out have been great, so check it out for FREE at Midwood. Nathaniel and Devin are both also playing in a new sextet of mine that I’m hoping to debut this Winter…looking forward to this! Improvisations and potentially some loose compositions as well.

Monday 9/17–Trio @ Kif, 219 Dekalb St, Brooklyn NY, Jacob Teichroew-sax; AH-bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell-drums, 8-10p, FREE–Standards, fun, free! Come have a drink and listen. I don’t get to play with Jacob often enough so this will be great.

Monday 9/24–Trio @ Kif, 219 Dekalb St, Brooklyn NY, Eric Trudel-sax; AH-bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell-drums, 8-10p, FREE–More standards, more fun, more free! This one features Eric’s trio who have been a group since 2007.

Saturday 9/29–Ruckus NYC @ Cooper Union, Cooper Square, NY NY, lineup TBA, 8p, ruckusnyc.tumblr.com–Still working out the details on this one, but be sure to check out the website for this very unique day-long conference taking place at Cooper Union. The conference ends with a massive concert which will feature one of my own groups TBA.

Sunday 9/30–Signal Problems @ Freddy’s Bar, 627 5th Ave, Brooklyn NY, Danny Gouker-trumpet, compositions; Eric Trudel-sax; AH-bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell-drums, 8p, freddysbar.com–Another Signal Problems gig, but this time we’ll be playing the old hits which we’re planning to record at the end of the year. This is an AMAZING lineup with great friends Sweet Talk and VaVatican both playing. Don’t miss!

Thanks for checking in. Coming in October will be more Signal Problems and an awesome new band called Denial and Error led by drummer and composer Kate Pittman on a couple of dates.

My roommates are a band. The four of us play in a lot of bands together, but as one band we exist as Danny Gouker’s Signal Problems. That’s all four of us and no one else. Danny Gouker-trumpet, compositions; Eric Trudel-tenor; AH-bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell-drums. We recently played at the Korzo Konceptions series curated by James Carney. Here’s a video of how the set ended:

Out of Your Head Brooklyn is up-and-running and was pretty full-force right out of the gate. We’ll be at Freddy’s Bar (627 5th Ave) every 1st and 3rd Sunday at 9:30pm. There’s a ton of video from the kickoff show at http://outofyourhead.org. These two videos, shot by Daniela Mileykovsky, are some of my favorite moments of the night. And there were a lot of great moments:

I am honored to have received a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council in the area of Music Composition for 2012. There are a number of Baltimore-based projects that this will be very helpful with, primarily updating the OOYH website and mixing the Lubbock record (which is recorded and sounds awesome).

I have a lot of performances coming up in the next few months that I’m excited about. I’m honored to be playing with so many musicians that I respect and admire. I’m especially looking forward to coming back to Baltimore on March 8 to play with Beep Honk (Dave Ballou, Anthony Pirog, Mike Kuhl, and myself) at the Windup Space. I learned a lot of really important things about music in that room. I don’t know…maybe I’m being nostalgic, but I owe that place, and the musicians that I perform with there, and Russel de O’Campo a lot.

I’m happy. Things are great and I have awesome people in my life. It’s a nice feeling to be content but still pushing forward. This is the bloggiest thing I’ve ever written.